Queen’s University boosts mental health resources for workers

'The launch of this new wellness content reflects extensive consultation and feedback from community members across the university'

BY Jim Wilson 29 Jul. 2024

Queen’s University is offering more resources to cater to workers’ mental health needs.

For one, it launched a centralized hub of employee wellness resources on the HR website to improve access for all employees seeking support and information related to their wellbeing.

"The launch of this new wellness content reflects extensive consultation and feedback from community members across the university,” said Sydney Downey, director for employee wellness services at Queen’s University.

Wellbeing road map

Queen’s University also launched an Employee Wellbeing Road Map to provide suggested areas of action, based on best practices and collected data, “that can have a meaningful impact on the wellbeing of employees.”

The road map can be used:

To guide the development of initiatives and programs within departments or portfolios
As a tool to share and celebrate best practices that have had demonstrated impact such as the Appreciation and Recognition Toolkit and the Gold Folder
To track and report the collective effort that has been taken to improve wellbeing at Queen’s.

The Road Map features four key pillars and 12 objectives that align with the Campus Wellbeing Framework, says the university, including: Team Culture in the Workplace, Belonging and Social Connection, Personal Wellbeing, and Place.

Overall, there was a 140% increase year-on-year in the number of employers struggling to manage poor mental health across their workforce, according to a previous survey of employers in Canada, Australia, Ireland and New Zealand.

BeWell Grant at Queen’s

The university’s HR department has also launched a BeWell Grant, a one-year pilot program that provides funding to support small-scale workplace well-being activities and projects “as we work together to establish and nurture a vibrant, caring, and thoughtful university environment.”

Available to any department or portfolio from across Queen’s, the number of grant applications funded is dependent on the number of applications received and the amount distributed for each successful grant.

Anyone with an employment relationship with Queen’s University is eligible to apply for funding from the BeWell Grant

Nearly half of employees across the world are suffering from burnout, according to a previous report. And while there is a strong desire among Canadian employees to access mental health services, that’s out of reach for many, according to another report.